Five men who know what it means to be president of the United States shared a stage in Texas Park last week. Then the newest among them flew to Waco to mourn 11 killed in a fertilizer plant explosion in the small town of West.

All presidents try to rewrite history to burnish their brief place in it, and in his new presidential library, George W. Bush gets his turn.

Barack Obama's legacy is still a work in progress, though even sympathetic commentators are seeing him now, in his fifth year, as too slow to act, too cerebral to brawl and too little respected by his political enemies.

In one role, however, Obama has excelled: Mourner in Chief. It's not a constitutional duty but oddly important.

In the past several months, he has shown up on the ground, in person, able to empathize and to grieve in coastal towns ravaged by Hurricane Sandy; in a Connecticut town ravaged by a lone gunman; in a proud city driven to eerie silence by two bombers; and in a Texas town where firefighters were killed doing their job.

As Mourner in Chief, Obama has left enduring images, too. While a smug speaker of the House chortles over out-maneuvering the president on favors to the rich, Obama walks into the crowds in New Jersey and looks shattered homeowners in the eye.

He did so again in Newtown, in Boston, and in Waco, sharing the grief and affirming their courage to keep on.

Such mourning won't bring Congress into line. While citizens were mourning, Congress was catering to the powerful by smoothing out air travel delays that Congress itself caused. But in nurturing America's soul, the contrast between ignoring citizens and sharing their pain has impact.

Nothing in the Constitution requires a president to venture into the nation's suffering rather than flying safely over it in a helicopter. But there is in America an implicit deal between White House and citizenry, in which presidents truly care for the American people. Not just those who give boatloads of money to politicians, but the ones who actually do the work that enables the precious 1 percent to have those boatloads.

I hope the searing experience of being Mourner in Chief might stir Obama's appetite for political battle. The people need an advocate. Gun merchants have a strong one. Bankers and the super-rich have theirs.

Not so with firefighters who move toward danger, military troops in harm's way, families crushed by debt, or elderly citizens watching Congress steal their retirement funds.

Americans have few in power who remember that we are people. Now that President Obama has looked the broken in the eye, I hope he will shed his reserve and become an advocate for the people.